Biofuel Breakthrough: Seaweed Could Power Cars

Energy experts believe that seaweed holds enormous potential as a biofuel alternative to coal and oil, and US scientists say they have unlocked the secret of turning its complex sugar into energy.

Unlike other microbes before, the Berkeley, Cal., team engineered a form of E. coli bacteria that can digest all the seaweed’s sugars into ethanol, potentially making it a cost-competitive alternative to petroleum fuel, without the use of agricultural land, said the report yesterday in the journal Science.